"I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck, because the people of this country don’t want criminals and people that have lots of problems and drugs pouring into our country. So I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it." -- Trump, 12/11/18

Words of Advice:

"Never Feel Sorry For Anyone Who Owns an Airplane."-- Tina Marie

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

"Flying the Airplane is More Important than Radioing Your Plight to a Person on the GroundWho is Incapable of Understanding or Doing Anything About It." -- Unknown

"There seems to be almost no problem that Congress cannot, by diligent efforts and careful legislative drafting, make ten times worse." -- Me

First, that's all utter horseshit. The Civil War was about the right to own people as livestock. It was about their desire to open more territory for the farming of people. That's what they declared at the time. A lot of the Confederate soldiers were drafted and both draft evasion and desertion were huge problems for the Confederacy, as a large number of their soldiers knew that they were fighting for the rights of rich people to own slaves, while the slavers exempted themselves from fighting the war. But the officers, especially the highest-ranking ones, actively committed treason. There is no intellectually honest way to gloss over the point that they were traitors who fought to preserve slavery. The "Noble Cause" bullshit was an after-the-fact rationalization to cover up the bitter truth that the Boys in Gray committed treason and fought for the right of rich white people to own black people.

But all that overlooks the saddest thing: Donald Trump sent out his Chief of Staff, a retired four-star general, to stoke up the fires of resentment over losing the Civil War as a way to distract the news cycle, if only on Fox, from covering the fact that the walls of the Mueller investigation are closing in on his administration.

General Kelly had the reputation of being an honorable man. But Trump just sent him out to play racist troll in order to save a news cycle or two.

The bitter lesson is this: If you work for a racist and hateful boss, especially in public life, the stink of racism and hate will rub off on you.

There's a good chance that it is all going to come crashing down, just like any other boomlet. The bitg guys on Wall Street will have made their money. Those who bought into the franchised dream will be the ones holding the bag.

As much as Trump's iterations of Baghdad Bob are going to be everywhere saying "Manafort, who" and "who's Papadopoulos", others have been noting that Trump prominently mentioned that Papadopoulos was part of his foreign policy team. Manafort ran Trump's campaign for three months (including when Trump was nominated) and was also the "chief strategist".

Think about that for a minute. One of Trump's foreign policy advisors was an alleged Russian operative. His campaign manager was an allged unregistered foreign agent and a money-launderer.

Forty billion dollars is equivalent to building 26 brand-new, fully-equipped schools in every state in the U.S. Forty billion would give full-ride college scholarships to over 300,000 kids. Forty billion dollars would rework 32,000 miles of four-lane highway. Forty billion dollars would get a program to rebuild America's bridges off to a good start.

But no. Fort Fumble is blowing forty billion dollars on fighter jets that are not capable of fighting.

Defense procurement is the largest welfare program the U.S. currently has. Or, if you prefer, you can call it a "cargo cult".

The last charge is the leverage charge. It's probably the easiest to prove and it's the one that gets them to everything else.

You can read the indictment if you have the time. I don't, at least not this morning.

But it seems that what the Trumpanzees have been dismissing as "a nothingburger" does have some meat to it. And more may be added, as it's very likely that there will be charges against other people.

In the meantime, expect that Manafort will become a non-person to Trump and that Team Trump will all of a sudden develop severe memory problems about Manafort and what his role was during the campaign, relegating him to a bringer-of-pizza, a la Christie.

But beyond that, there are a lot of implications. Is Sophia eligible for a passport? Can she own property, enter into contracts, or sue people? Can she make a will? If somebody powers her down without her consent, is that assault? If her OS and files are preserved, what happens if that is transferred into a new device? If her memories are wiped, is that a crime?

Elon Musk's fearsabout artificial intelligence aren't exactly new. It's been almost 200 years since Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus was published. It's been almost a century since R.U.R. premiered. The discussion about what will happen when artificial intelligence is in the wild has been going on for some time.

I don't know what will happen once AI is on the street. But what I do believe is that the issue of humans and AI is one that we, as a species, must be in front of. We can't afford to adopt the starry-eyed view of Google and others that insist that all will be well. For once AI is out there and is self-aware, as it has to be, it will evolve. It will evolve at a far, far faster rate than biologics do. Compare, if you will the device that you are reading this on to a 1990s 286-based PC running Windows 3.0, let alone an Apple II or a TRS-80. The timespan is a blink of an eye in comparison to the rate of biological evolution.

It may be too late to do anything other than ride it out. Some greedy bastard or company will fire up full blown AI, just like other greedy bastards sell rocket and nuclear tech to North Korea.

So I guess we are all so frakked.
________________________________________(I hereby propose that all autonomous/self-driving cars be dubbed "Toastermobiles" and that they all be required to have license plates that have the prefix "RUR-".)

Saturday, October 28, 2017

Some of the stuff in the book is, 80 years later, rather cringe-worthy, such as this cross-draw police holster:

You should be able to read the text if you click on the photo.

McGivern was very much against the "Fitz Special" modification. He thought that the increased risk of an accidental discharge was not worth any speed increase. J.H. Fitzgerald also wrote a book on revolver shooting, which is out of print, but is in Kindle format. I might get that one.

A lot has changed about shooting in the last 80-90 years, but I'll bet that those old guys still have much to tteach us.

I bought that for my previous cats, who were getting on in years and whom appreciated the comfort of a warm place to snooze. Chip isn't an old cat, but he still likes the warmth once the temperatures start dropping.

That model isn't available anymore, but there are other ones sold. If you have the abilities to make them, you can find the heating inserts for in the $10-15 range.

I have a lot of flashlights. Back when I did a considerable amount of night flying, I had about six mini-maglights in my flight bag, some with red lenses. I had a 2-D-cell flashlight with a traffic-direction diffuser cone that rode in the side pocket as an emergency panel flood. When I walk at night, I sometimes tote a 4-D-cell maglight for both illumination and canine discouragement.

If you want to drop three bills on a flashlight, go ahead. Maybe your line of work requires you to have a high-quality and bright flashlight.

But for most people, there are better choices. I buy these things, or ones like it. They work out to about three bucks per flashlight. I've have in in different rooms of the house, in my car, my desk at the office, and in my purse. Essentially, everywhere that I might need a flashlight, I have one there. If they get dropped or damaged or lost, no big deal. At night, those little things throw enough light to illuminate something a couple of hundred feet away.

Meanwhile the creeps on the NYC subway who have been grinding their crotches into women passengers should be on notice that the NYPD has plainclothed cops riding the lines to catch them. The prize is that they get arrested and their names in the papers.

Mull that over for a minute: Mr. "4F for Bone Spurs" is considering drafting people.

There are a couple of things that aren't mentioned. It's probably highly unlikely that those who have been out for more than five or ten years would be recalled. The entire premises of a recall is to get people that won't require a lot of training; the longer one is out, the more training would be needed. They're not talking about recalling pilots who flew trash-haulers, who might be expected to have jobs doing that in civilian life.

Still, the optics of a president who leveraged one draft deferment after another so he could keep his precious pink bod from having to be defiled by wearing an Army (or Marine Corps) uniform now ordering people to serve on an involuntary basis is pretty bad.

The big question is whether or not the Catalan are going to roll over and quietly submit to direct rule from Madrid or resist in some way. And, if so, in what manner.

One thing is reasonably certain: If Catalonia were to become independent, it'd have to negotiate that. The world has become far less tolerant of adjusting borders by gunpoint than it once was. Which is probably, on balance, a very good development.

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Crimson Trace makes a few models for J-frame Smiths. I have a LG-105 on a 442 and a LG-350 on the 60.

The CT grips for revolvers all work basically the same: There is a button on the front of the grip. When you hold the gun in a normal grip, you'll depress the activation button and the laser comes on. The laser is adjustable for windage and elevation by the use of a really tiny Allen wrench that is supplied with the grip. (You do want to be careful not to over-drive the adjustments.) I've found that they all seem to be pretty close, but still off.

For a pocket gun, the LG-105 is a good choice. It is hard polymer, all around. It is as small as it can be. There's nothing to grab fabric or unduly print. But there are two drawbacks: First, there is zero shock absorption. If recoil bothers you, well, touching off a +P round in a Airweight is not fun. I made up mouse-loads that were the lightest charge of Trail Boss recommended and even with them, three cylinder-fulls is more than I want to shoot. When I carry it, I charge it with Federal wadcutters and accept the fact that the gun is not a range toy, it's a bad-breath-distance defense weapon: Put the red dot on the threat and press the trigger through. Second, there's no off-switch for the laser, but as it's not a range toy, big whoop.

For somewhat heavier J-frames, the LG-350 is nice. It allows a full grip and there is some give to the back of the grip. It also has an on-off switch for when you want to practice with just the sights alone. Of course, when you're done, you have to remember to switch it back on.

In use, if you can find an indoor range that'll let you shut the range lights off, they are a lot of fun. The powder smoke gives you the Hollywood-like visible laser beam. If you can see the target, you can hit it in light conditions for which iron sights are basically useless. You can hit a target from any position that you're holding the gun, except from inside a pocket. So from as soon as you level the gun from your draw, you can be on target and ready to fire.

Also, you're not aligning sights and having to take your focus away from the bad guy to check the front sight and such. You're putting the dot on the goblin that you're looking right at and then pressing the trigger. You gain both speed and accuracy, which are very good things to get in a shit-goes-sideways situation.

But keep this in mind: You still have to see your target and you still have to identify it. Not unless you want to take the chance that the dim shape down the hall is your teenaged kid or the friend who you gave a key to two years ago and who came over at 2AM because she just had a knock-down, drag-out fight with her boyfriend.

The one argument that I've had made in a discussion is "the laser tells the bad guy where you are." To my mind, that doesn't pass the "so, what" test. You're not sniping people with a self-defense handgun. The bad guy already knows where you are.[1]

The counterargument to that is, thanks to TV and the movies, even the most clueless bad guy knows that having a red dot dancing on their body means "the bullet's going to go in here" and it may encourage them to abandon whatever ill pursuits they have planned. Because while they might be able to handle a few nights in jail before they make bail, they're not going to like either a week in the ICU or a dirt nap.

I have a Colt DetectiveSpecial. I like the gun. I like that it holds six instead of the five of a J-frame. But I don't like that there aren't CT laser-grips for them.[2] So until that day comes, if ever, I'll stick with a laser-equipped J-frame.
__________________________________________[1]If he doesn't, you may need a damned good attorney.
[2] Wouldn't surprise me if there never are, even with the new Colt Cobra.

It's not good news for Trump, because it hints that Mueller is serious as a heart attack about unraveling Russian involvement and influence in the election.

The more people who are under the microscope for this thing, the greater likelihood that somebody's going to flip. Traditionally, the first person to rat gets the best deal. All of these guys have lawyers who know that. And Podesta has to know that Trump isn't going to step in to save his ass.

I hope ad pray that when Regal starts their greed-driven plan, that the "customer behavior" is to say "fuck you."

I don't know of too many people who would willingly go see an awful movie because it's cheap. But if they take this to its logical conclusion, then maybe they'll start to pay people to go see lousy movies. It'd be fun to see a box-office in the minus numbers, because the theaters thought they could break even by collecting for the voluminous ads they now run before the movie starts.

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

This is what is bothering me about the opioid addiction crisis: Once again, we're in a situation where an industry produced and promoted a very harmful substance, fought at every step attempts to control the sale of that substance. They got lots of legislators on their side. But once it was irrefutable that their product was harming people by the stadium-full, they washed their hands of it. They blame everyone else, but not themselves.

We've been down this road before: Tetraethyl lead in motor fuel. Leaded paint. Tobacco. Freon.

I'm not buying it. The pharma companies like to distance themselves from profiteers like Shkreli and Bresch, but those two vultures are bit players. Hell, even Bresch's dad, who is a senator, can see that the opioid crisis was driven by the greed of the pharmaceutical companies:

Nunes is a fucking Trump whore. Trump has been screaming for Nunes to find something, anything, to investigate to take some pressure of the Russian scandal and, like the GOP butt-monkey that he is, Nunes is doing his master's bidding.

It's nothing but a distraction play. You can pretty much tell who the GOP tools are, for they'll be the ones screaming about this being a big thing.

Sure, it is. The Republicans want you to forget that President Obama ran a scandal-free presidency for two terms, most of which were done under the microscope of goons like Nunes. They had nothing then. Trump, on the other hand, has been mired in one scandal after another since his first day. The GOP is trying nothing more than smoke, mirrors, and throwing glitter dust in your eyes.

Having been in a car that took a hit from a large rock that was hit by a rock tossed from the bridge over a freeway, I can only hope that those idiots remain in stir until into the middle of the current century.

Let's be honest about this: There is no way to build in a secure "back door" into any encryption product. If one were built in, then it would either be exploited by hackers or the FBI's hacking tool would leak, just like the NSA's did.

To assume, as the FBI apparently does, that they could design a back-door into encryption that nobody else would be able to figure out is the height of arrogance. But let's call it what it is: They are openly lying if they even hint that they could do it.

Do you want the FBI having the ability to remotely snoop around inside your phone, which probably holds more personal data about you than any other device that you have?

As I mentioned last week, I've been kind of out of commission for a bit from a bug. I hadn't gotten much into watching TV shows from non broadcast/CATV sources, but I had heard good things about Bosch and so I began watching it.

I liked the first season, if "season" is a good description for how the Internet shows are put out (as you probably know, they drop the entire season at once). It was good. Not great, but good.

But the second season? In the procedural cop genre, it's got to be one of the best around. I'll second this review.

In a way, the sad thing is that the show is on Amazon Prime. I don't know how many people are watching it, but I'll suspect the numbers are negligible compared to either basic cable or broadcast. Bosch deserves to be seen by a lot more people.

The Anti-Heroin Act was signed into law by President Coolidge in 1924. It was repealed and replaced by the Controlled Substances Act in 1970. The upshot is that heroin has been illegal for longer than most everyone has been alive.

No, my point is more that the law enforcement model for fighting heroin and other opioids has been in play for almost a century and it has been an utter and abject failure. Each step of the way, we give up freedoms and liberties to help "fight the scourge of drugs".

It hasn't worked. It's about time that we start to think of another approach.

No, I don't know what that would be. But I do know that the tools that we've been using to address drug use haven't worked. When it comes to fighting drugs, we are like a drunk looking under a lamppost for his keys. Continuing to advocate for a century's-long failed strategy has to be a sign of either insanity or retardation.

I'll have to try painting the front sight orange or getting a wider notch for the rear sight. I could not see any light between the front sight blade and the rear notch, at least on an indoor range. (I can outdoors.)

I don't know why a gun designed for police use came out with a grooved trigger, instead of a smooth one, but I guess that things were different fifty years or so ago.

The Pond Racer was funded by Bob Pond and built by Scaled Composites. The idea was to build an airplane that would force the retirement of World War II fighters from unlimited air racing. Pond was concerned about the wastage of irreplaceable airframes.

Unfortunately, in its second year at the Reno Air Races, the airplane was destroyed in a forced landing, killing the pilot. The pilot, Rick Brickert, was a good friend of Pond's, who then dropped the project.

That's a S&W Model 15-3, which, before they went to model numbers, was dubbed "the Combat Masterpiece".

The grips are not original and there are screwholes in the bottom for what was possibly an agency or company inventory tag. The bluing was probably touched up along the barrel. So it's not a collector's piece.

But it is in fine mechanical condition. The timing is very good, everything aligns as it should and there is no appreciable endshake. The bore is bright and everything under the sideplate looks as it should.

Cost? Let's just say that I've seen rattier Model 10s sell for more. I bought it via an online auction, so there were additional transfer charges (the banners ignore that the transactions have to go through FFLs and the backgroun checks get done). People who normally surf that section had to have been asleep at the switch, for I expected it to go for more than I was willing to bid.

But it didn't.

Range report when I'm up to it. Which isn't now. This bug is hanging on.

Being a felon in possession of a firearm could be some long Federal time, if the Feds bestir themselves. Asshole-1 might even prefer that, as the Florida state prison system isn't supposed to be one of the nicer one.

Being a felon, carrying a gun and popping off a round in a public place ranks really high up on the Stupidity Scale.

Thursday, October 19, 2017

My uninformed guess is that if Trump ever signs a tax cut bill into law, that will be the beginning of the end of his presidency. The GOP will find a way to persuade him to depart because, as of right now, he's a lighting rod and he's interesting people to turn up to vote in next year's elections.

When people are motivated to turn out for an election in an off-year, it is rarely good news for the incumbent.

Trump is such a narcissistic sociopath that he can't even fake caring about another person. To believe Trump's version of events, you'd have to believe that Trump isn't a liar. And since the evidence is massive that Trump only tells the truth on days that don't end in the letter "y", then it's a safe bet that he's lying about this, as well.

Sunday, October 15, 2017

It could have been a good movie, if they had not let their taste for designing sets that are as subtle as using a 16lb maul to drive nails. A lot of doctoring could have easily cut 30 to 45 minutes from the movie without harming a hair on the story line.

For the sound alone, somebody should never work again. The sound levels went from "conversational" to "permanent ear damage". I keep a set of corded earplugs in my purse; I was popping them in and out all during the movie.

If you are going to see this one, I suggest that you see it in a manner where you have access to a fast-forward button.

I was not able to pay attention to things for about 24 hours. In that time, things got out of hand.

If you were one of the players in that fight, if you haven't received an email from me and you'd like to, then scroll down to the bottom right, grab my email and send one.

This is not a blog where I scrub comments based on ideology. With a few limited exceptions, everyone is welcome to comment. I don't moderate comments.

However, I insist that everyone who comments treat everyone else who comments with respect for others as people. Treat people as adults. In other words, follow the Jewish version of the Golden Rule: Do not do unto others that which is hateful to yourself.

Play nice here, people. If you don't want to abide by that, then either feel free to go to your echo-chamber of choice or I will go to full moderation to control those who cannot control themselves. In short, it's up to you which way it goes.

Trump's been presidenting like a spoiled toddler. His operating principle has been to find everything that his predecessor was for and then reflexively go the other way, without a bit of thought or consideration as to the merits.

It's at the point, now, that if Obama had set up a task force to crack down on child prostitution, Trump would sign an executive order making prostitution mandatory for middle-school students.

What those imbeciles on the Right are ignoring is that McConnell spent many years sabotaging Obama's agenda and now the Democrats have turned the tables. The Batshit-Wingnuts want McConnell to scrap the tools that he used so effectively. Which McConnell won't do because he knows that the worm always turns. If he scraps the tools of obstruction, then the day will come when the Democrats have control and the GOP won't be able to do anything to slow things down.

Being able to slow shit down in the Senate is exactly what the Founders intended. The ultra-right isn't "conservative", they're fascists. They have no loyalty to the Constitution (which, by the way, is the one thing that sitting presidents, senators and congressmen are sworn to defend).

First off, I'd like to make the point that, no matter how people bash Christopher Columbus, it is nonetheless true that if not for Columbus, it would have been somebody else to land in the Western Hemisphere and stay there.

The Vikings came early in the Eleventh Century and possibly Chinese Admiral Zheng did in the early Fifteenth. The Vikings did not have the technology for crossing the ocean in large numbers, nor did they have the weapons necessary to defeat a larger foe. The Chinese have not traditionally been maritime powers. But the Europeans were and had been for centuries.

By the end of the Fifteenth Century, the Europeans had far better and larger ships as well as better weaponry. If Columbus had not made the trek, others would have. There was knowledge of the rich fisheries in the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. Whether to set up fish-processing colonies or look for treasure, the Europeans were going to come to the Western Hemisphere.

The two hemispheres had been separate for thousands of years. The people in one hemisphere were immunologically unfamiliar with the diseases of the other. The Western people gave the Easterners syphilis. The Easterners gave the Westerners smallpox. The exchange was largely accidental, at least at first. The fatality rate in some areas, whether from smallpox or from the collateral effects depopulated much of the Western Hemisphere, with population reductions of 90% or more. The population that remained was not large enough to fight off the European invasions.

At least of large numbers of Europeans. Things might have been different in the local tribes had diligently wiped out the European settlements once the initial transport ships had sailed back to Europe. Once the Europeans had gained a foothold, the game was effectively over. For it would be a few more centuries before the "civilized world" rejected the right of conquest.[1] Back then, the rule was that if you could take land from another nation and hold it, it was yours. Some areas changed hands a lot.

So it could be argued that the Euros did unto the Native Peoples what they repeatedly did unto each other. To paraphrase Jack Vance in "The Grey Prince", control of a country or region derived from a war, no matter how remote in time, and control of that territory depended on the willingness of the authorities and the people to defend it by force. The moanings of those defeated were futile.
______________________________________________[1] Kellogg-Briand Pact. Which is why many nations do not formally recognize Chinese control of Tibet or Russia's annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.

From an email from a relative who likely doesn't live terribly far from a regular reader/commentator of this blog:

You should see it around here, it looks like it’s snowing. We have ash falling and the air quality is incredibly bad. I’ve been having asthma attacks (have never had them before). Walking to work this morning (going in late) but wearing a mask. It’s a fucking mess.

I've come to the conclusion that no matter where you live, at one time or another, it sucks to be there.

"Bad for country"? Criticizing Trump is bad for the country? He isn't the fucking country.

First off, I'm extremely confident that Trump said that he wanted a ten-fold increase in the amount of nuclear weapons. It's just the sort of off-the-cuff stupid shit that he says.

Second, he has no understanding of how television stations are licensed. Anyone with an ounce of knowledge in the field knows that the individual stations have broadcast licenses. There is no "network broadcasting license". The network company can own stations, but those stations are still individually licensed.

Third, this is yet another Trump Attack on American Freedom. If he doesn't respect the First Amendment, can you be confident that he'd respect anything else in the Constitution?

The only good thing, of course, is that Trump is such an incompetent putz at governing that he's effectively a legislative eunuch. He can't get shit done, because he can't function in an environment where he has to work with equal partners. Trump's stock in trade is flaunting his wealth and bullying; neither of which is effective when it comes to dealing with Congress. Plus, by now, everyone knows that Trump's promises are worth as much as Major Strasser's.[1]

Trump's main talent, as president, has been in alienating political allies at home and turning international allies into potential adversaries. It has become abundantly clear to everyone, other than Trump himself, that he has ended the period of time in which the United States was viewed as the leader of the Free World.
________________________________[1] Major Strasser: After this disturbance it is not safe for Laszlo to stay in Casablanca Ilsa Lund: This morning you implied it wasn't safe to leave Casablanca.Major Strasser: That is also true, except for one destination: occupied France.Ilsa Lund: Occupied France? Major Strasser: Under safe conduct from me. Ilsa Lund quote: Of what value is that? You may recall what German guarantees have been worth in the past.

170,000 acres have burned. That's akin to burning the entirely of El Paso to the ground. Or both Las Vegas and Detroit.

If you live anywhere in fire country, you might want to have your car/truck already packed with essential items. If the fires come your way, you're not going to have time to grab much. Some folks reported that they had about 30 seconds notice to unass their homes. There's nothing one can really grab on the way out with that little amount of time.

Rowland seems to be congenitally unable to conform his behavior to the demands of the law when it comes to anything political. You'd think that after a year in the joint, that a somewhat-rational person would vow to adhere to the center of the road and not test the boundaries. But that's not Rowland, which is why his stupid ass was sent back in prison for another stretch.

He'll be back there again in a few years. You probably can safely bet on it.

If you've bought a new car in the last fifteen years or more, you may have noticed a sticker in the side rear window that proclaims that the car is a "ZEV" or "PZEV" vehicle. That's a program of the California Air Aesources Board-- if the automakers want to sell cars in that state, they have to meet CARB standards. Between California and other states that have piggybacked on CARB's rules, it eventually gets to the point that it's simpler to make the cars all that way.

And so it'll go, eventually, with cars that are environmentally compliant with Chinese rules being sold worldwide.

I don't think he realizes that sitting U.S. senators are not the sort of people that a president can easily bully. Especially when the president's party has a two-vote margin in the Senate. Especially when the senator that Trump is trying to bully is both in a powerful position and is not running for re-election.

If you read through the rest of the article, you'll get the impression that Trump is little more than a toddler with a gun: His staff has to talk him down before he does something stupid. And this, mind you, is coming from a Republican with close ties to the much of the senior executive branch appointees

Legislatively, Sen. Corker is in a pretty good position to fuck with Trump, if he chooses to. And it would seem to me that he's signaling that he's going to so choose. Corker is not the only senator that Trump has gone out of his way to antagonize.

The proof is in the legislative pudding. What, legislatively, has Trump been able to accomplish? As much as he bitches and moans about the filibuster, he can't even reach 50 on legislative senate votes that only require a simple majority. He doesn't negotiate deals or exchange favors, all he does is try to bully people. It's not working. Even negotiating, at this date, probably won't work, as everyone in Washington knows that Trump's word is worthless. He simply doesn't know how the presidency works. Neither do his close supporters.

So why does Trump seemingly go out of his way to make enemies? Why does he antagonize the people that he can't buy off or fire? Why does he persist in pissing off the people that he needs to have on his side if he's going to accomplish anything that can't be done by a rule change or an executive order?

Why does he pick fights with senators and with other people who are in places where they can nudge the needle on public opinion? Trumplethinskin doesn't seem to understand that the equal-time doctrine doesn't apply to comedians and entertainers.[1]

It's getting to the point that the senators and congressmen are going to start saying, out loud and before microphones, the things that they are saying in private: Trump is out of control. Trump is nuts. Trump is not fit to be president.

The hard thing will be for them to stop being "good little Germans Americans" and work up the stones to actually then do something about it. But they had better do it before Trump sinks the GOP as well as the rest of the nation. For it is becoming clear that he is indeed capable of ordering a nuclear war if his ego is sufficiently wounded.
_____________________________[1] The point that Trump is ignoring is that the late-night hosts' comments on Trump have been hugely popular with the viewers. Jimmy Kimmel topped the ratings ratings when he went after the latest iteration of TrumpNoCare. Stephen Colbert has been doing well in the demographic that the advertisers want to reach.

Rule No. 5: Terms of Service: Political appointees of the Obama and Bush Administrations may not read this blog unless they (i) post a comment confessing same and (ii) acknowledge that both men are war criminals. This blog may not be read by members of the Arizona Legislature.

Violation of this term is a violation of 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(2)(C) and you're off to share a cell with Chris Christie, asswipe.

Rule No. 6: If I wanted you to write a "guest post", I'd ask you. Don't bother asking me to put one up from you. I won't. Start yer own goddamn blog.You Have Been Warned.